Tess Gerritsen - The Silent Girl

Footsteps creaked on the porch stairs and the boy suddenly pulled away from her, as though embarrassed to be seen hugging her. Maura looked at the man now standing behind Rat. Anthony Sansone had always seemed a forbidding figure, physically imposing, his face impossible to read, but on this gloomy afternoon, he was smiling as he set down Rat’s backpack on the porch.

“There you go, Julian,” he said.

“Thank you for driving him all the way to Boston,” she said.

“It was a pleasure, Maura. It gave us a chance to talk.” He paused, his gaze searching her face, and as always he seemed to see too much. “It’s been a long time since we spoke. How are you?”

“I’m fine. Busy.” She forced a smile. “I never have any shortage of clients. Would you like to come in for a bit?”

He looked at the boy, who’d been glancing back and forth between them, following their conversation with great interest. “No, I should let you and Julian catch up. Are you two going to be fine for the week?”

“I have to go in to work Monday and Tuesday, but starting Wednesday I have some time off. We’ll take a tour of the city.”

“Then I’ll pick you up next Saturday, Julian,” said Sansone, extending his arm to him.

The man and boy shook hands. It was an oddly formal farewell, but between these two it seemed perfectly natural, and just what was expected. Rat waited until Sansone returned to his car and drove away. Only then did he look at Maura.

“We talked about you,” he said. “On the drive down.”

“All good things, I hope.”

“I think he likes you. A lot.” Rat picked up his backpack. “But he’s kind of strange.”

People could say the same about you, she thought, looking at the boy. About both of us. She draped an arm around him and felt him flinch at the unaccustomed affection. For too long, the boy had lived like a wild animal, foraging in the Wyoming mountains, and in his eyes she still saw traces of the abandoned child. The world had not been kind to Julian Perkins, and it would take time for him to trust another human being.

They walked into the house, and the boy glanced around the living room. “Where did Bear go?”

“I think he’s already made himself at home here. I bet he’s discovered all the goodies in the kitchen.”

That was indeed where they found him, gobbling up the lamb trimmings that she’d placed in the ceramic dog bowl. She had never owned a dog, and the bowl was brand-new, as was the extra-large dog bed and the leash and the flea powder and the cans of Alpo stacked in the closet. Where the boy went, so did Bear, which meant that this week she was sharing her house with two alien creatures, a dog and a teenager. In the oven, drippings from the roasting lamb sizzled and she saw the boy lift his nose, like a beast scenting his supper.

“Dinner should be ready in an hour. Let me show you your room,” she said and frowned at his backpack. “Where’s your suitcase?”

“This is all I brought.”

“Then it looks like you and I need to go shopping for clothes.”

“No, I don’t really need anything,” he said as they walked up the hall. “We all wear uniforms at the school.”

“This room’s yours.”

Bear trotted in first, but the boy hesitated in the doorway, as if wondering whether a mistake had been made. It suddenly struck Maura what an absurdly feminine room this was for a boy and a dog. Reluctantly Rat stepped into the room and surveyed the white duvet, the vase of freshly cut flowers on the dresser, and the pale green Turkish rug. He touched nothing, as if these were all museum pieces and he was afraid to break something. Carefully he set his backpack in a corner.

“How is school?” she asked.

“It’s okay.” He knelt down to unzip the backpack. Out came two shirts, a sweater, a pair of trousers, all neatly rolled up.

“So you like being at Evensong? You’re happy there?”

“It’s different from my old school. People are nice to me.” It was a matter-of-fact statement, said without self-pity, and it revealed how painful his life must once have been. She had read his files from Wyoming, so she knew about his fistfights in the school yard, the taunts he’d endured about his ragged clothes and his fractured family. So many people, from his social worker to his psychologist, had warned her that the boy was too troubled, that taking him into her life could lead to consequences she’d regret. Now she watched that troubled boy calmly unpack his clothes and hang them neatly in the closet, and she thought: Thank God I never listened to them. To any of them.

“Have you made friends at school?” she asked. “Do you like the other students?”

“They’re a lot like me,” he said. He opened a dresser drawer and placed socks and underwear inside.

She smiled. “You mean they’re special.”

“They don’t have parents, either.”

This was news to her. When Sansone had told her he was offering the boy a scholarship to the Evensong School, he had emphasized the institution’s academic strengths and rural campus, its international faculty and superb library. He had said nothing about it being a school for orphans.

“Are you sure about that?” she asked. “There must be some parents who come to visit.”

“Sometimes I see someone’s aunt or an uncle. But I’ve never met anyone’s mom or dad. He says we’re each other’s family now.”

“He?”

“Mr. Sansone.” Rat closed the dresser drawer and looked at her. “He asks about you all the time.”

Maura felt her face redden and she focused on Bear, who was turning around and around in the dog bed, getting a feel for this new luxury. “What sort of things does he ask?”

“If you’ve written me any letters lately. If you’re ever coming to visit the school. Whether you’d like to teach a class there.”

“At Evensong?” She shook her head. “I’m not sure a class in forensic pathology is appropriate for high school students.”

“But we’re learning a lot of cool stuff. Last month, Ms. Saul showed us how to build a Roman catapult. And they let me teach a class on animal tracks, because I know so much about it. We even dissected a horse.”

“Really?”

“He broke his leg, and they had to put him down. We cut him open and studied his organs.”

“Didn’t you find that upsetting?”

“I’ve dressed deer. I know what dead things look like.”

Yes, you do, she thought. In Wyoming, he had watched a man bleed to death. She wondered whether he sometimes startled awake at night, as she did, haunted by the memories of what had happened to them both in the mountains. He seemed so calm and controlled as he set his schoolbooks on the dresser, as he took his toothbrush into the bathroom, all his emotions shuttered up tight. He is more like me than I care to admit .

In the kitchen, her cell phone was ringing.

“Can I go outside and see the yard?” he asked.

“Go ahead. Let me get this call.”

She walked into the kitchen and pulled the cell phone out of her purse. “Dr. Isles,” she answered.

“This is Detective Tam. I’m really sorry to be calling you on the weekend.”

“Not a problem, Detective. How can I help you?”

“I wondered if I could ask your opinion on an old homicide. It happened nineteen years ago, a shooting in a Chinatown restaurant. There were five victims. At the time, they called it a murder-suicide.”

“Why are you pursuing something that happened nineteen years ago?”

“It could be connected to our Jane Doe on the rooftop. It may be the reason she came to Chinatown. It seems she was seeking out people who knew about that restaurant shooting.”

“What do you want me to do, exactly?”